What Are Therapists Thinking When You're Talking to Them?

How to you feel about that?

How to you feel about that?

Psychotherapy helps people deal with serious problems by paying more attention to the person who has the symptoms than to the symptoms themselves.When I first see a new patient, I am focused primarily on trying to understand who this person is. By this I mean that I want to know what has happened to this person, and why is he or she suffering so much that it was necessary to seek professional help? This is not the same as asking “what is this person's diagnosis?” True, most patients come for help because of some symptom (i.e. anxiety or depression), but that is not they are.